It feels like we are always talking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or the DC Extended Universe, or whatever new series in development with a “shared universe” idea has hit the webs this week.
After the success of the MCU, it was no surprise to see some of their work with a shared universe emulated by other franchises and studios. However, it’s easy to forget that while the MCU has basically perfected the idea, they were not the first studio, series, or franchise to dabble with a shared universe.
So today, we will be discussing one of the most interesting yet relatively unknown shared universes out there, and how it relates to other theories that we have seen over the years. Today we will be examining J.J. Abrams, Star Wars, Lost, and a number of other franchises that theoretically exist in the same cinematic universe.
Gather round it’s time once again to delve into the latest TV news that we deem fit to print!
Michael Bay + TV= Sexy Pirates
The man behind the Transformers movies is producing a series for Starz and they’ve gone and released a trailer. If you have a thing for men in dirty, salt water stained clothing half naked and women in period garb, also half naked… then this is the show for you!
Created by Jonathan Steinbergand Robert Levine, who worked together on bothHuman Target andJericho, Black Sails tells the story of Captain Flint (Toby Stephens– Prince John in BBC’s Robin Hood) and his crew, including the infamous John Silver (Luke Arnold) twenty years before the time of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
Given that Spartacus is ending this year, audiences will be looking for another show with sex, action, and accents to fill the void and it looks like Black Sails is more than willing to step in.
I’ll be watching if for no other reasons than I have a love for tall ships and of course that smirk!
Heroes coming to an XBox near you?
Way back in December of 2011, it was announced that Microsoft was seriously looking at branching out into original programming. Now that XBox Live has become a legit media hub (I’m currently watching Netflix’s Hemlock Grove on my XBox), it makes sense that they would want to make a go at their own shows. Given the popularity of XBox and Microsoft’s promising 1st quarter financials, this seems like a good time to make that move.
You know what’s not a good idea? Having that first jump into the “original programming” water being actually the revival of a show that had moments of brilliance but that was quickly and thoroughly drowned out by mediocrity.
That right folks, MSN is rumored to be considering retooling the NBC sci-fi drama, Heroes. They obviously aren’t bringing back the original cast but instead are relaunching it with a brand new cast while the old-schoolers will be making cameo appearances. I think we all know this is going to be so awesome and cool and super duper exciting.
One can only hope that MSN has more ideas up their sleeves and this is just a small part of their plan going forward.
Reaper is returning to your TV!!
Now this is a show MSN should have jumped on and “brought back”. Too bad for them, FEARnet got it first. Starting in June, FEARnet is set to air all two seasons of the fan favorite. In addition, they will be putting together a half hour reunion special. Deadline has already confirmed that Sam (Bret Harrison), Sock (Tyler Labine), and The Devil (Ray Wise) are set to appear. I’ll admit that I hadn’t heard of FEARnet before this, but they are on a number of cable providers, sorry satellites, no Reaper for you! As for everyone else, enjoy a show that we here at Grizzly Bomb surely believe was Gone Too Soon.
Too much Saul Goodman? No such thing.
NBC might have passed on the Dwight Schrute centered spin-off of The Office but AMC is looking at the soon ending Breaking Bad and they see potential in a spin-off starring Bob Odenkirk’s loveable lawyer, Saul Goodman. Of course there is potential! While Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston are obviously the stars as the meth making duo but Goodman is a scene stealer by every definition of the phrase.
Of course how this would work is certainly a good question. Saul is usually a moment of comic relief in tense moments so how would his character carry a show on his own? As this idea is just in its infancy, I’m sure there will be plenty more questions to be asked in the coming months. It’s only a matter of time before people start bringing up Vince Gilligan’s failed X-Files spin-off The Lone Gunmen.
The Bridge succeeds in confusing us all.
Seriously. If you’ve seen FX at all recently you know what I’m talking about. These four promos that don’t do much to explain what the show is about.
So that’s The Bridge. I’m sure those four bits answered all your questions about the crime drama. Oh you didn’t know it was a crime drama? Well it is. Based on a Scandanavian show, that is also being redone in Europe as The Tunnel and between England and France, The Bridge is about a serial killer who is being hunted down by detectives both in the US and Mexico.
Demián Bichir plays the Mexican detective and Diane Kruger his American counterpart. At first blush, it sounds a bit like The Killing with maybe a bit of Twin Peaks (mainly due to the odd promos) mixed in. That could be completely off base, I’ll just have to wait until July to see if I’m right.
So there you have it, the top news as we see it in TV today! If you think we’ve missed a story, by all means let us know down in the comments or if you’re feeling downright neighborly, it’s perfectly all right to just say hello. Until next time!
Here comes another noteworthy Fringe promo. They’re going full bore into preparing us for this whole flash forward thing they showed us last season, this time with a more viral video approach rather than a straight up preview. As we know, the Observers turned from an interesting story element of the mythology of the show, to the forefront of the threat to humanity as we know it. They have become the one, big bad, unifying thing that ties all of the “Fringe” events of Fringe all together in its entirety. The promo itself is fairly simple, with an Observer describing “Residency protocol”, which is just code for the installed curfews on us. He also frequently references “A scan”, which as we saw last season, is tantamount to a horrific psychically induced death, a la Scanners. In fact, assuming it’s intentional, I’m fairly positive it’s a reference to that film.
But of course they can’t show this on TV, but we all know that’s what they mean.
Here’s the promo:
I’m really antsy for this season to come already, as Fringe is a show that is truly unique. Never has a show gone from being truly awful, like it was in Season 1, to one of the best examples of Science Fiction in recent memory, and by far the best Sci-Fi show on television today. If you had asked me that the fifth season of this show would be as good as it is, and be where it is, in relation to the first season, I would have slapped you for trying to trick me into continuing to watch a terrible show. It took the coaxing of several friends repeatedly telling me “it gets better, it gets better, just watch it!”, to trudge all the way though the full first season. When I did, I got to that admittedly pretty clever and enticing last episode, which opened up the show in such a beautiful and revelatory way. It’s climb in quality since then has been exponential, and created some of the best hours of TV I’ve ever seen. Season 3’s “White Tulip“, featuring Peter Weller, also known as goddamned RoboCop, is an incredibly moving and brilliant time travel story that never manages to lose its emotional center, or get bogged down with technical minutiae. That episode alone puts Fringe up in the echelon of brilliant modern TV shows, alongside Battlestar Galactica, Lost, the first season of Heroes, Doctor Who, Carnivale, and even The X-Files.
The flash forward in this season isn’t exactly a new idea itself, as Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse employed the same tactic for its season finales, for both its seasons. Unfortunately, Dollhouse was a muddled, plodding, slow paced show that never found its footing, and meandered about for the whole first season until that decent finale. It’s a bummer that the finale, which might as well have been an entirely different show, was a much better show than Dollhouse ever was. Then Season 2 rolled around, and went back to the same boring, plodding pace, and that was enough for me. Fringe has taken the sudden flash forward concept and ran with it. What will happen to our Fringe team? What happened to Olivia in between now and then? And will the Observers be stopped? Will timelines be changed? Can they be changed? Is there truly no fate but what we make?
There’s even a few noticeable Easter eggs in the promo, that compelled me to grab screenshots for you to analyze and speculate further. Enjoy!
Grizzly Bomb 